Out like a lamb The month of March, that is. “In like a lion, out like a lamb.” That was the tag given to March in my childhood, along with a dozen others for various months and seasons: “February fill-dyke” (an entreaty, not a description: February is the driest month in England); “Flaming June”; and others I’ve mislaid.
Well, it has sure worked out that way. This last day of March has been a beauty here on Long Island, bright and warm. My daughter is out on the deck, reading; my son, under a one-week computer ban for some misdemeanor, has (gasp!) gone for a walk. I got a little cabin fever myself, and went to check out the treehouse, to the great indignation of a squirrel who’d taken up residence among a heap of leaves in one corner. Once I’d evicted the squirrel, I tidied up, sweeping the floor and ceiling (the latter for insect fuzz-balls), checking for tree-growth stresses, tightening bolts, hanging out Old Glory. If the weather holds, I shall have my breakfast up there tomorrow. Spring!
Tax Season Tax season is extra frustrating this year, after all the stories about high-flying business and political types who just don’t bother. Latest poster boy for Why-Bother? is Al Sharpton. America’s Newspaper of Record reports that Rev’m Al didn’t bother in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007. So we’ll be seeing him in an orange jumpsuit doing weed-whacker duty out on the county roads pretty soon, right? Ha ha ha ha ha! Of course not. People like Rev’m Al don’t go to jail. Not only has the good minister not gone to jail, in fact, he’s been cut a deal, paying only a little more than half of the $1.8 million outstanding. Hmm, wonder if I could get a deal like that? Ha ha ha ha ha!
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(I note in passing that Rev’m Al “does ‘consulting’ work for corporations.” What do they consult him about, I wonder? I have a momentary vision of one of those news items from North Korea, where the Dear Leader stands deep in thought at some agricultural research station while the scientists all stand around with expressions of eager reverence, waiting for his “guidance” on the proper balance of nitrogen and phosphorus for millet cultivation. But I doubt it’s like that. More like this, probably:
XYZ Corp. V.P. for Public Relations: Rev’m Al? Those ACORN people are threatening a demonstration outside our downtown offices again. Can you help?
Rev’m Al: No problem. Did my check go out yet this month?
V.P.: I’ll call Accounts Payable, don’t worry about it.
Slime mold I’ve been reading up on slime mold; please don’t ask me why. This stuff is fascinating. I wish I’d paid more attention to biology at school. Listen to this, from Arthur Koestler’s The Roots of Coincidence:
The slime mould [sic] is an amoeba which lives on bacteria found among the decaying leaves in forests. It multiplies by simple cell division every few hours. This leads to recurrent population explosions accompanied by shortage of food. When threatened by famine, the amoeba [Koestler now quotes extensively from John Bleibtreu’s The Parable of the Beast] “commence the enactment of an incredible series of activities . . .” The amoeba stop behaving as individuals and aggregate into groups, which form clumps, discernible to the naked eye. These clumps then “form straggling streamers of living matter, which . . . orient themselves towards central collection points . . . At the hub of each central aggregation point, a mound begins to form as groups of amoeba mount themselves atop other groups . . . This hub gradually rises first into the shape of a blunt peg, and then into a distinctly phallic erection. When all the incoming streams of amoeba are almost completely incorporated into this erected cartridge-like form. It topples over onto its side, now looking like a slimy sausage. This slug begins now to migrate across the forest floor to a point where, hopefully, more favorable ecological conditions will prevail. Estimations about the size of the population . . . vary, but generally it is thought that perhaps some half a million amoeba are involved . . . After migrating for a variable period of time (which can be two minutes or two weeks) in the direction of light and warmth, this slug gradually erects itself once again into its phallic shape until it is standing on its tail . . . This oval shape gradually assumes the form of a candle flame, bellied at the bottom and coming to a point at the top . . . The end result is a delicate tapering shaft capped by a spherical mass of spores. When the spores are dispersed . . . each can split open to liberate a tiny new amoeba.”
What a performance! How do the half million amoeba know to do all that? It’s even more baffling than the nidification of bees, who at least have teeny little brains so they can figure out what other bees are doing. These are amoeba. They don’t even have a nervous system.
I suppose somebody knows the answer. If any reader does, and can explain it in words of two or fewer syllables to a guy who came to biology much too late in life, drop a line to me at the e-address on my website.
